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COFZRIGHT DEPOSir. 



MY A. E. F. 



Hari"^ Frances (Mo/^s) 

MY A.E.F 



A HAIL AND FAREWELL 



BY 



FRANCES NEWBOLD NOYES 




NEW YORK 
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 






W'^^ 



Copyright, 1920, by 
Frederick A. Stokes Company 



COPYRIGHT. 1919, BY 
McCLURE'S MAGAZINE (INC.) 



©Cf.A570495 



fi. / 



MY A. E. F. 



MY A. E. F. 



Because you are the best thing that ever 
happened to me in my life, I want to tell you 
so, my A. E. F. You were the most won- 
derful playmate — the truest comrade — that 
a lucky girl ever had, and I can't let you go 
without talking to you just once more. I 
can't realize that I have lost you — that all 
the world has lost you — that in such a little 
while you will have passed like a dream in the 
night ; you, so vivid that you seemed eternal, 
so alive that it seemed that you could never 
die, swinging along with that incredible 
blending of dignity and impudence, a flash 
of white teeth and shining eyes lighting up 
your lean young face, singing and swearing 
in the same breath ; never too weary to swag- 
ger a little — and God knows that sometimes 
you were mortally weary ; never too bitter to 

[1] 



MY A. E. F. 



find a jest — and sometimes, my A. E. F., 
you were passing bitter ; never too rough to 
fail in gentleness — and there were times 
when no Sunday school in the universe or its 
senses would have awarded you a diploma. 
But no more gallant figure ever swung 
thi'ough the ages than you in your bright 
youth and your drab khaki; you, with yopr 
curly head high and your shoulders back 
under the weight of the world and an 
eighty-pound pack ; you, with the dreams of 
an old world and the vision of a new behind 
those shining eyes of yours — eyes that could 
be as level as Justice, and as dancing as 
Folly, and as tender as Pity. How can 
you be just a memory, you who were more 
alive than Life itself? You were more 
friend to me than any friend that I have 
ever had, dearer than any love, the comrade 
that we go seeking all our lives. When you 
saw me standing there by the road down 
which you were striding, your hand came 



[2] 



MY A. E. F. 

out to me quicker than thought and you 
swung me along with you, small and breath- 
less, and a little frightened, because you 
were so big that I was wondering whether 
I could keep up with you, or whether I 
mightn't be only a bother, after all. But 
you swore that it was easier to walk with 
my hand in yours ; you never laughed when 
I took three steps to your one; you never 
let me go. You made me feel that I was 
your pal, and your slave, and your god- 
dess — and it's a lucky girl who has even 
one man to make her feel that. I had a 
thousand ! 

There were very few things that we didn't 
try together. I've served you everything 
from soup to doughnuts; sold you every- 
thing from Fatimas to postage stamps. 
I've given you everything from Camels 
and ice-cream to good advice — and my 
heart; I've hiked hundreds of miles with 
you, and danced, I verily believe, thousands ; 



MY A. E. F. 



I've sung every song that you ever sang, 
from the days when we passionately de- 
manded, "Where do we go from here, 
boys?" to the days when we even more pas- 
sionately queried, "How you gonna keep 
'em down on the farm?"; and when we sang 
"Hail, hail, the gang's all here!" I didn't 
substitute "deuce," either. I've ridden with 
you in side-cars and trucks, freight-cars and 
river -boats, busses and aeroplanes; I've 
played auction and pinochle, pitch, and 
poker with you, and I've even (oh, tell 
it not in Gath) I've even shot craps. 
I've ruined innumerable perfectly good 
games, in spite of the fact that I am 
able to reason fluently with that ada- 
mant young creature, Phoebe Five, and 
fully understand that four aces beat two 
pair; but if a fellow has to cut out any lan- 
guage more fervent than "Gee" and can't 
play for even a quarter of a centime it takes 
away some of the first fine careless rapture 



[4] 



MY A. E. F. 

of the game, doesn't it? And I can pay no 
higher tribute to your splendid chivalry and 
superb mendacity, my A.E.F. (of both 
which qualities you are justly proud) than 
by saying that never, never did you fail to 
make me feel that the party would have 
been a dismal failure without me. I have 
been in hospitals with you when you were 
dying, and I had to smile at you, and when 
I thought that I was, and I had to smile 
at myself — and that was a good deal the 
easier of the two. I've written your letters 
for you, when you hadn't any fingers to 
write with, or when you hadn't any words — 
when you had been so brave that you 
couldn't tell them about it, or when you had 
been so weak. I think that I have looked at 
seven hundred and eighty thousand photo- 
graphs that you carried with you, and once 
in a while the lady has been so devastatingly 
plain that I've barely been able to murmur 
a feeble, ''Hasn't she got a nice straight 

[5] 



MY A. E. F. 

look in her eyes?" and the baby has been so 
fantastically ugly that I've just managed to 
gasp heartily but ambiguously, "Well, that 
is a baby!" — but, oh, I've loved them all. 
I have taught you my French, and you 
have taught me yours — and they're both very 
good languages. I may also state that 
though the Alexandrines of Racine and Cor- 
neille, those companions of my childhood, 
may grow dimmer and dimmer with age, I 
firmly expect to go down to my grave say- 
ing, "Beaucoup francs," and "Ca ne fait 
rien," and "Pas compris." "Ah, oui," my 
A.E.F., we are citizens of the same far 
country and speakers of the same tongue — 
I'll say we are! We need no overseas rib- 
bons to identify us; we all have the pass- 
word. A.w.o.l. has, alas, no mystery for us, 
nor yet has goldfish, to our sorrow; we 
aren't ignorant of the technical meaning of 
salvage, but we occasionally use it to camou- 
flage a short, ugly word that we were wont 

[6] 



M Y A. E. 



to employ; **stealing" isn't fashionable in 
the A.E.F., but salvaging certainly is. 
When we say M.P., we don't mean member 
of parliament, nor do we invariably refer to 
olive drab when we say O.D. And do we 
occasionally yield to mirth when one of 
those unlucky ones who wasn't with us looks 
at us in pale amazement as we babble lightly 
on about A.P.M.'s and A.P.O.'s, R.T.O.'s 
and Q.M.C.'s? Do we? I'll say we do! 
Though time was, my A.E.F., when we 
didn't know what even those magic letters 
stood for; I can remember trying to find 
out in a sweltering and desperate Washing- 
ton, and I can remember being told by a 
sweltering and desperate official that they 
didn't stand for anything! So maybe we'd 
better not be too superior. 

You've taught me more than your lan- 
guage, my A.E.F. You've taught me that 
there is nothing better than the average man 
— ^the man who is building bridges in Ore- 

[7] 



M Y A. E. 



gon and planting corn in Iowa, driving a 
truck in Newark or an engine in Nebraska 
— that, whether he has a cattle ranch in 
Texas or a hardware store in Tennessee, he 
is of the stuff of which heroes and comrades 
are made — because he is the A.E.F. — ^he is 
you. I don't idolize you, for all that I love 
you; well, well do I know your faults — did 
you ever hide them? Intolerant, arrogant, 
over-confident; taking for granted that the 
best is none too good for you; too swift to 
draw conclusions, too slow to relinquish 
them; sure that if things are not done as 
you would do them, they must be done 
wrong; reckless of consequences to yourself 
and others — no saint, my A.E.F. But you 
are the average American, and you are more 
generous, more chivalrous, more humorous 
and gentle and gallant and strong and fine 
than any knight of Arthur's court — and a 
little maid whose comrade you were for 
many weary months will love and honor you 

[8] 



MY A. E. F. 



until she dies. Because you did something 
for her that she can never repay — no, not 
though she served you all her life with the 
hands and feet and heart and head that were 
so eager to help you. You took the world 
that she lived in — her little, narrow, pretty 
world, full of furs and frills and flowers and 
foolish pleasant things — you took her little 
world and made it safe for democracy. 
Humanity and democracy ! There is a man 
who uses those words often, and whom they 
have mocked at for using them, calling them 
the vague generalities of a visionary. But 
we — ^we know, you and I, of what he is 
speaking; and so long as I live I shall re- 
member that the greatest lesson that you 
taught me was that those vague generalities 
were the only realities worth living for — 
and worth dying for, too. Democracy — 
we learned that the railroad engineer was 
just as good a fellow as the railroad mag- 
nate ; Humanity — that the railroad magnate 

[9] 



MY A. E. F. 

is just as good a fellow as the engineer. Be- 
cause we weren't snobs, were we, my 
A.E.F.? We weren't snobbish even about 
the upper classes; they were all right when 
you got to know them. You see, they were 
that vague generality, Humanity — and you, 
who were both human and democratic, 
learned how ridiculously unimportant were 
the great accidents of birth and fortune. 
Why, the only man that we ever knew who 
could be cheerful and K.P. at the same time 
was a Harvard graduate whose income ran 
into higher mathematics! 

And because I've loved you so — ^because 
we were such pals — I want you to come back 
to me just once, my A.E.F., before you 
leave me forever. Come and sit beside me 
just once more, and let's talk; I've such a 
lot of things to say. We've had some won- 
derful talks, haven't we ? In the little room 
at G.H.Q., with the gay curtains that we 
were making for the gas school turning 

[10] 



MY A. E. F. 

its dreariness to brightness and the bitter 
night outside held at bay by the roaring 
little stove; the Argonne that you had left 
behind you a few hours ago, tearing through 
the mud and rain on your motor-cycle, 
seemed very far away, but its shadows were 
in your weary young eyes and on your 
strained young face. In an hour you must 
be off again with your despatches through 
that hateful night — and you must ride with- 
out lights. Oh, my A.E.F., sitting there in 
the shabby room with your tired head in 
your shaking hands and the thought of that 
black ride to horror to shake you further — 
you'll never know how I longed to give you 
lights! And I kneeled before the little 
stove, making the coffee that was to give 
you warmth, broiling the steak that was to 
give you strength, and praying — I who am 
not much given to prayer. I think that 
someone must have heard it, too, because 
when you left there were the lights of laugh- 

\ [n] ^ 



MY A. E. F. 



ter in your eyes, and your hands were stead- 
ied to endurance, and you were whistling 
under your breath — a reckless, haunting, ab- 
surd little tune, that I had danced to half 
a hundred times. But I cried myself to 
sleep that night, my A.E.F., because I 
couldn't bear to think of you, so young, so 
heart-breakingly young, and so mortally 
tired, going whistling back through the 
darkness into that hell. — Do you remember 
the walks that we used to take back to my 
billet — a mile and a half through the rain 
and mud — but. Heavens, how we used to 
laugh and chatter! All the years that were 
gone to talk about — all the years to come, 
if whatever Gods may be were merciful — 
we planned a new world, there in the rain 
and the mud. Sometimes your face would 
be grim enough, and you would announce 
with bitterness and conviction that you 
hadn't studied integral calculus for five 
years to break rocks in the road for five 

[12] 



MY A. E. F. 



months; and that when those blanketty 
blank shavetails drove by, spattering your 
blue overalls with that everlasting mud, you 
felt so like a Bolshevik that you could learn 
Russian in six lessons. But five minutes 
later the narrow street would be ringing 
with your laughter ! 

I remember, too, the first time that 
you came into my little blue and gold 
sitting-room in that land of blue and 
gold that you had been given to play in. 
The sitting-room was my present to you; 
for many months I kept it full of flowers 
for you — there were chocolates for you to 
eat and cigarettes for you to smoke and 
magazines for you to look at — in the after- 
noon there was tea, and in the evening there 
were little cups of black coffee, and always, 
always, there was a very small person who 
loved you, and never got tired of hearing of 
your dreams, the happy ones and the broken 
ones, too; we mended a good many of them 

[13] 



MY A. E. F. 



between us, you and I — sometimes with 
laughter, and sometimes, for all that you 
were so gay and reckless and defiant — some- 
times with tears. That first day when you 
came in it was tea time. You stood in the 
doorway, so tall that you almost had to 
stoop, and looked into the gay, kind little 
room, gleaming with its open fire and rose- 
colored flowers, its soft lights and its sing- 
ing kettle, and after a long while, you said, 
very softly, "Gee." But you said it as 
though it were a prayer, and there were 
tears in your eyes — and I understood, my 
A.E.F. It had been long and long 
since you had seen a little fire or rosy 
flowers — a long, dark time since you 
had heard a kettle singing — and you had 
wondered too often whether you would 
ever see or hear them again. Then there 
was that time in the Louvre. You had on 
two wound stripes and a Croix de Guerre 
and a D.S.C.; and when I asked you if you 

[14] 



MY A. E. F. 



knew where the Rembrandts were you said 
yes, and couldn't you show me? We did 
have the most beautiful time that day. You 
were from Fall Center, Kansas, you told 
me, and you had never seen any pictures 
before; but this was the twelfth time that 
you had been to the Louvre, so you were 
making up for lost time. Had I noticed 
that Holbein over there, and the little 
Italian Madonna, smiling down at the baby 
in her arms? You loved the way that she 
was ignoring you and the general public; 
most of the pictures seemed to take an un- 
due interest in it! When we got through 
looking at the special pastel exhibition up- 
stairs, and you had shown me the craps 
that the early Romans used to shoot, 
couldn't we have tea together? True, we 
didn't know each other's names, but we 
knew that we both liked Titian's Man with 
the Glove, and a certain lovely shadowy 
landscape of Corot's, which was much more 



MY A. E. F. 



important. And how about dinner that 
evening? They were singing Tosca at the 
Opera Comique, and you wanted dreadfully 
to hear it — they didn't sing it in Fall Cen- 
ter. Heavens, how we did talk, my A.E.F., 
of shoes and ships and sealing-wax for 
hour after hour, and when we pushed back 
the coffee cups I thought of how terrify- 
ingly far you had traveled from that little 
Kansas town, and wondered what you were 
going to take back to it — whether you would 
help it with your new knowledge or hurt it 
with intolerance. Because it is largely in 
your strong, young hands that the fate of 
the Fall Centers lie — and through them the 
fate of America — and through America the 
fate of the world. Somewhat of a respon- 
sibility, isn't it? And you look down at 
those brown hands of yours with an in- 
credulous and deprecatory smile. Smile 
away, my A.E.F.! In your heart well you 
know that it is true. And it's what I want 



[16] 



MY A. E. F. 



to talk to you about, in this last talk of 
all. 

Before you go away from us forever — 
before you wave farewell to us around that 
last corner — you have one more tale to tell. 
Day in and day out, night in and night out, 
in far-off France you dreamed of the in- 
credible day when you would come up the 
village street through the summer twilight, 
and see the lamp shining in the window of 
the little house, and clear the porch hung 
with honey-suckle in one bound and the nar- 
row threshold in another, and enter into the 
land of Heart's Desire. Small matter if the 
village street were called Broadway or Main 
Street or Orchard Lane — for you the twi- 
light was always sweet with flowers, and 
the light was always shining in the window. 
But when you found your breath — when the 
wonder of it all ebbed enough to let you find 
words again — what did you tell those eager 
ones, my A.E.F.? There were so many 

[17] 



MY A. E. F. 



things that they wanted to know; they had 
been waiting, bewildered and dazed by all 
the words and all the books and all the 
papers, until you came back to tell them 
what had really happened. Because they 
were so sure that you must know — why, you 
were theirs, and you had been there — on 
your words hung all the law and the proph- 
ets! What did you tell them, my A.E.F.? 
You have been back long enough now to 
see things pretty clearly — long enough, I 
believe, to regret some of the quick and bit- 
ter judgments that you passed with your 
tongue — never, never, with your heart. 
Long enough to see that America has great 
need, in these hard days, of faith and hope 
and charity — and that the greatest of these 
is charity. You, my comrade, were the 
defender of her ideals — you are still their 
guardian. If, careless and unthinking, you 
belittle the dreams for which you fought — ^if 
you belittle those who fought beside you and 

[18] 



MY A. E. F. 



those who tried to help you fight, you are 
unfaithful to that trust. For there are 
many who are wondering, sick at heart, 
whether the game was worth the candle of 
their sacrifice and yours, if the tales that 
they have heard are true. 

What of the War? Of the French, of 
the British, of the Germans? Of the Y and 
the Red Cross? Of the officers and of the 
men? Tell them true, my A.E.F., tell 
them true ! Here in America to-day, we are 
fighting another War — perhaps an even 
greater one — a war against selfishness and 
materialism and intolerance and hatred. It 
will be a losing fight if we go armed only 
with suspicion and bitterness and despair. 
You must give us other weapons to fight 
with — enduring faith in others, enduring 
trust in ourselves. That is why I am ask- 
ing you to tell them, before you go, the real 
story of what you found over there — so that 
they may find courage, over here. Don't 

[19] 



MY A. E. F. 



pass on the catchwords that you have ban- 
died about amongst you — tell them the 
truth, as you have finally tested it out for 
yourself, as you have drawn it from out the 
well of your heart. 

Because they are going to believe you — 
and you dare not play them false. 

What of the War? It is hard for us to 
realize how much of it America has for- 
gotten — how incredibly much of it she 
never knew. To us, my A.E.F., even when 
months had passed after that unforgettable 
day in November, it was still the realest 
thing in the world — far realer than the 
lovely, shadowy, silvery figure of Peace 
that had stolen quietly in to take its place. 
We were still living in the ruin and wreck 
that it had left behind; how could we for- 
get it? Its red hand was on us still^ — ^hold- 
ing back the trains on which we traveled, 
turning us from the destinations where we 
would go, hurling us into strange and hated 

[20] 



MY A. E. F. 



places, doling out to us the same detested 
meat and drink that its savage hospitality 
had offered us of old, lashing us on to keep 
our rifles bright, our bayonets sharp, driv- 
ing our tired feet to the old drills, turning 
our tired faces to new problems. It wasn't 
very easy to forget it — its fingers were still 
at our throats! Even now, going quietly 
about our business in the gay serenity of the 
little towns or the triumphant clamor of the 
great ones, we pause sometimes with quick- 
caught breath and startled eyes — remember- 
ing, remembering — until this charmed secur- 
ity seems the dream — that far-off nightmare 
the reality. But the things which were daily 
bread to us are dust and ashes to the ones 
who loved us best. 

You found that the bits of colored cloth 
that you wore on your shoulders, your joy 
and pride and common knowledge, spoke 
an alien tongue to them. The little scarlet 
"1" which to some of you was dearer than 



[21] 



MY A. E. F. 

your heart's blood — they didn't know 
whether it stood for the first army or the 
first regiment or the first corps or the first 
division — and hideous to relate, my A.E.F., 
they didn't care! The Indian star that 
shone so bravely — and that for some of you 
shone brighter than the rAorning and the 
evening star together — for them shed no 
special radiance. All the numbers that 
made your heart beat faster and your souls 
exult — ^two and six, three and two, four 
and two, eight and nine — I could fill this 
page with their music, but to them they 
were numbers, nothing more. When you 
landed in New Jersey that gray morning 
and limped laughing back into your heri- 
tage, there was an eager stranger who 
asked you, pointing to your overseas ribbon 
with its galaxy of bronze stars, how you 
got your Croix de Guerre — and you told 
him with a smile that it wasn't exactly a 
Croix de Guerre; and a still more eager 

[22] 



M Y A. E, 



friend asked, pointing to your D.S.C., what 
campaign that ribbon stood for. The radi- 
ance never faded from your smile while you 
explained to him that it wasn't exactly a 
campaign ribbon, but your eyes were sud- 
denly shadowed with an immense bewilder- 
ment. Your ribbons! It was all very well 
for you to laugh at them, and to inform 
the awe-stricken public that the French 
gave away Croix de Guerres for cigarettes 
— the unadorned ribbon for Meccas, the 
bronze star for Camels, and the palm for 
Egyptian Deities — it was fair enough to 
you to insist that in your outfit they issued 
D.S.C.'s instead of socks — but in your heart 
you had firmly believed that the very cats 
in the streets would know the unutterable 
meaning and the inestimable value of those 
bright bits of patterned silk. It was fairly 
staggering. Possibly they thought that the 
white stars on the blue ribbon of the Medal 
of Honor stood for the number of Liberty 

[23] 



MY A. E. F. 

Bonds that the family had purchased? Why, 
a very lovely lady calmly informed me that 
one of my friends had been awarded the 
S.O.S. for bravery. If it didn't move you 
to despairing mirth it would make you cry. 
There's no denying it; as far as they are 
concerned the war is so dead that it would 
make Julius Caesar or a doornail seem ani- 
mated. Perhaps that's just as well, and 
sane and right and normal. While it was 
alive, it was even more alive for many of 
them than it was for us; we mustn't ever 
forget that. For them it had all the terrible 
intensity of a nightmare, instead of being 
the deadly commonplace horror that it was 
for us. For them, it^was always Tom or 
Dick or Harry doing something frightful 
with a bayonet or a hand-grenade, or having 
something even more frightful done to him. 
They didn't realize that what you dreaded 
infinitely more than the actual fighting — 
which after all, in its brief and lurid flashes, 

[24] 



MY A. E. F. 

seemed like a bad dream — was the everlast- 
ing hiking; arriving at night all in from 
thirty kilometers, and finding that you had 
ten more to hike; the everlasting rain and 
mud and cold ; the everlasting hunger, occa- 
sionally appeased by the succulent hard 
tack, the abominated corned Bill and gold- 
fish, less occasionally mocked with a few 
spoonfuls of cold canned tomatoes ; and that 
worse hunger of loneliness, a very passion 
of homesickness and longing and despair — 
the misery of a frightened child alone in the 
dark, with morning a great way off. That 
longing did not die with the armistice, my 
A.E.F. It throve in the gi^ay little French 
villages, in the bright little German ones; 
it walked with you by day and lay with you 
by night; it never loosed your hand until 
you went up the gang-plank. It was our 
last battle, and we fought it together. After 
all, it's just as well that there are a great 
many things that they have forgotten — a 

[25] 



MY A. E. F. 



great many that they'll never have to forget, 
because they never knew them ; even if they 
do think that Belleau Woods is a part of the 
Argonne Forest, it isn't going to shake 
the progress of the world ! Let them forget 
the war that you fought, my A.E.F.; but 
never, never while you have words to speak 
and breath with which to speak them, let 
them forget why it was you fought it. 
Sometimes it almost seems that they are 
forgetting even that. You fought so that 
all men might share your hard-won heritage 
of freedom and liberty — and because you 
loved her very dearly, for a little space you 
left the lovely lady with the torch, so that 
she might lift it even higher when she wel- 
comed you home. There are some who tell 
us that we have done our task, that we 
must draw aside — that the torch is shining 
for us alone, and not for all mankind. I 
think that they are trying to cheat us of 
the very fruit of our victory — the glory of 

[26] 



MY A. E. F. 



helping a tired and broken world to its feet. 
There are some of them — and I hold them a 
trifle lower than Benedict Arnold — who 
wish to take the laurels that you have 
brought them, and twist and warp and 
strain them into an ugly political weapon. 
They say (and it is strange hearing for us, 
my A.E.F.) that America must play safe. 
Play safe! We had forgotten that that 
was considered policy. With us it meant 
shame and dishonor and an ugly death while 
day was breaking for the world — how if it 
should mean that for America? Oh, tell 
them, tell them, those blind ones, that you, 
who have fought to give a weary world 
peace, will fight to keep it. You are a sol- 
dier, my A.E.F., and you dare not play 
safe. 

What of those friends who fought by our 
side — what account are you going to give 
of them? Let's take the two that you knew 
best — Tommy Atkins and Jacques Poilu. 

[27] 



MY A. E. 



Since I'm talking to you and not to the 
peace conference, I'm not going to pretend 
that your face lights up at the mention of 
these gentlemen, or that a burst of lyric 
enthusiasm wells from your fervent heart 
to your fervent lips. It doesn't. They have 
fallen victim to some of your most ani- 
mated and unwarranted catchwords. You 
don't have to tell me what you say about 
them — I know it only too well. What I 
want you to tell the breathless little group 
sitting on the back porch or in the front 
parlor is what you think about them. Only, 
most dear and most heedless, do a little 
thinking first. You can, when you put your 
mind to it. 

Tommy first. Of course, you never really 
did see much of him. Your principal griev- 
ance against him was that you had a very 
disagreeable time coming over in his ships, 
and that when you got to Winchester (or 
its equivalent) the only fatted calf that he 

[28] 



MY A. E. F. 



offered to the American prodigal was what 
you bitterly paraphrased as "jaam and tay," 
substituted for breakfast, dinner and sup- 
per. Alas, poor Tommy, he gave you the 
best that he had — and he went short even 
on that, so that you might come over on 
those reviled ships of his — and if it hadn't 
been for those same reviled ships, you 
might never have had a chance to experi- 
ment with jam and tea, or salmon and 
corned beef, or vin rouge and vin blanc. 
Which means that you might never have 
gotten over at all, my A.E.F. The real 
difficulty was that you thought that you 
had met Tommy before, under very un- 
pleasant circumstances indeed; and you 
pranced over to meet him again with a mind 
that was about as open as a safe with a 
forgotten combination, and a traveling 
equipment of a chip on either shoulder. It 
was true that you had met someone who 
was using his name before — a heavily dis- 

[29] 



MY A. E. F. 

guised, blustering, tyrannical individual in- 
troduced to you as Mr. Atkins by a smooth- 
spoken, ingratiating old party known as 
German Propaganda. The first time that 
you met him you were a very small, freckle- 
faced, bored little boy, sitting on a hard 
bench and reading the letter of introduc- 
tion that German Propaganda had written 
to you in a little book called "History of 
the U.S.A." He took great pains to state 
what a wicked and unprincipled fellow 
Tommy had been, and how he'd tried to 
steal everything that you held dearest from 
you; and while he professed faint hopes 
that the scalawag might have reformed, he 
managed to stress the crime a good deal 
more than the reformation. But he didn't 
tell you that George Third, the old Prus- 
sian who started the Revolutionary War, 
was so German that he could hardly speak 
EngHsh; that the war was so unpopular in 
England that they had to hire Hessians to 



MY A. E. F. 



fight it; that all her greatest men railed 
against it in and out of season. He was 
very discreet about these facts, wasn't he? 
And the next time that he introduced his 
Mr. Atkins was only a few years ago, and 
he was almost in tears over his dreadful 
conduct; he gave us fair warning that the 
unscrupulous wretch had subsidized our 
press and bribed the casual observer and 
corrupted our officials to such an extent that 
it was impossible to believe a word that they 
said, and he assured us that the fairy tales 
that they were indulging in anent wicked 
little Belgium and haughty and degenerate 
France were enough to make the blood of 
an honest German run cold. So that it was 
this purely fictitious Tommy that you went 
to meet — only he isn't the one that the little 
group listening in the twilight are waiting 
to hear about. They want to hear about the 
real one — the one who got up in the gray 
light of a London dawn to give you so pas- 

[31] 



MY A. E. F. 



sionate a welcome that it fairly took your 
breath away — the one that you found later 
with his back against a ruined wall in 
France, fighting, fighting, bloody and 
broken and white to the lips, but managing, 
somehow, to throw you a little, stiff, tor- 
tured grin, and managing, too, by his own 
grit and the grace of God, to carry on. 
If you ran into him in France, that is how 
you saw him — and if you didn't, don't pass 
on any picturesque gossip that you will 
make a little more picturesque in passing. 
Someone might believe it. But you might 
tell them about Tommy's younger brothers 
— the Australians, the Canadians, the New 
Zealanders and South Africans — ^you loved 
them like your own, didn't you, Yank? 
You'll tell the world you did! 

How about Jacques Poilu? You had 
another name for him, and you used it with 
more energy than discretion. For a good 



MY A. E. F, 



many months you made his own land echo 
with your plaints as to the devious ways of 
the *'frog." He got in your way when you 
were driving; he wrung every sou that you 
possessed from your feeble and reluctant 
fingers; his offspring made life a burden to 
you with their clamors for "ceegaretts" and 
"chooeen-gom" ; his feminine relatives pur- 
sued you tirelessly, unsolicited victims of 
your fatal fascination. All very, very har- 
rowing. I used to try conscientiously to 
reconcile this pathetic picture of the mar- 
tyred young exile with the A.E.F. that I 
saw before my puzzled eyes, a vivid figure 
of mischief and resourcefulness and reck- 
lessness and sheer, heart-warming charm, 
playing endless games of ball and marbles 
in the little parks and narrow streets with 
the enchanted children, listening with beau- 
tiful deference to the incomprehensible tales 
of the old grandmothers in the doorways, 
flirting assiduously and debonairly with 



MY A. E. F. 



the velvet-eyed girls, bargaining and chaf- 
fing and swapping stories with Jacques him- 
self. True, he got in your way when you 
were driving — but at the rate at which you 
went it was a little difficult to keep out of 
your way, my A.E.F. ; true, he cheated you 
often, but in that land which we are firmly 
convinced is God's country, your own people 
cheated you quite as energetically — I saw 
them do it ; true, his children begged shame- 
lessly from you — but you taught them to do 
it, and filled their eager little hands in spite 
of any and all protests, and did your level 
best to spoil them forever ; true, the maidens 
of the land fell victim to your charm — but 
you asserted it brazenty, my dear, and 
seemed to take a melancholy satisfaction in 
the results. Was all this just an optical 
illusion on my pa«'t? Sometimes I used to 
feel that one of us must be the victim of an 
hallucination — because surely no one in his 
sane senses would continue to lavish af- 



[34] 



MY A. E. F. 



fection and attention on the object of his 
disparagement! Perhaps I was just dream- 
ing that I hardly ever saw you without 
some Gallic mite perched on your shoulder 
or clinging to your hand or trotting at 
your side — dreaming that you were everlast- 
ingly polishing those boots of yours so that 
pretty Marie Adelaide Therese could see 
her face in them — dreaming that you stead- 
ily persisted in breaking every rule of the 
canteen in order to purchase cigarettes and 
chocolates for ''them frog guys that hadn't 
any of their own" — dreaming that you 
would linger time and time again to tell me 
of your adored and adoring landlady — 
"Honest, she treats me like a prince; be- 
lieve me, if I was her own kid, she couldn't 
treat me better. I want to get her a pres- 
ent; you tell me what she'd like, Petite." 
Why, the very nickname that you gave to 
me was borrowed from France — and I loved 
it — and you — and her. I wasn't dreaming; 

[35] 



MY A. E. F. 



but I'm thinking that perhaps sometimes 
you were, my A.E.F. 

I haven't much to say to you about the 
Germans, largely because I find that when 
I try to talk about them I lose my voice 
and my temper and my sense of humor and 
a good many other things worth hanging 
on to. Besides, I think that you can lose all 
of them just as well as I can! Of course, 
when you paid them a visit last fall you 
found that you were pretty nearly comfor- 
table for the first time in many weary 
months, and it rather went to your head. 
You found yourself wondering whether 
people who offered you the best bed in the 
place with guttural noises of welcome and 
hospitality could be demons incarnate, and 
somehow you counted it for righteousness 
to them that there wasn't any shell hole 
in the side of the house. But it didn't take 
long for the first glow to wear off, and be- 
fore many moons had passed you had 



[36] 



MY A. E. F. 



pounced on the illuminating discovery that 
when even the most inspired demon had the 
choice between being affable or being shot 
at dawn, he'd jolly well be affable. And if 
you'll just tell your breathless listeners some 
of the things that you told me about the in- 
dividuals that you soberly referred to as 
"those damned Dutch — excuse me, lady," 
I'll be perfectly contented — perfectly. 

About the "Y" and the Red Cross and 
the other organizations that went over there 
to help you, I do want to talk to you — and 
if you are inclined to feel resentful of any- 
thing that I may say, I want you to re- 
member, my A.E.F., that it's because I love 
you so that I can't bear to have you either 
ungrateful or ungracious — and because I 
am afraid that you will have to own that 
you have been both. To save my life I can't 
understand your attitude towards us who so 
longed to help you ; who worked our fingers 
to the bone, morning, night and noon, to 



[37] 



MY A. E. 



give you a little comfort and a little happi- 
ness. I am speaking now of "us" as or- 
ganizations, not as individuals. On the in- 
dividual girl you lavished such a wealth of 
gratitude and praise that you left her hum- 
bled and bewildered and a little intoxicated ; 
but on the organization of which she was a 
symbol you have heaped unceasing criticism 
and unstinted blame. I myself happen to 
be a Y girl; and I have never ceased to be 
proud and glad of that fact. The only 
thing that I was prouder of than the tri- 
angle on my sleeve was the U. S. on my 
collar ! So this isn't an apology on my part 
— it's an accusation. I dare wager that 
the only organization over there for which 
you have a good word to say is the one that 
you saw the least of — ^the one that, in nine 
cases out of ten, you never saw at all. The 
Salvation Army, with its tiny band and un- 
complex duties, did splendid work; but no 
more splendid work than was done by the 

188] 



MY A. E. F. 



other organizations that were woven into 
the very fabric of your daily lives. I say 
that advisedly. Look up, for example, the 
number of Y workers killed, wounded, cited 
and decorated for bravery in trying desper- 
ately to help you who were so heedless 
of their help; where will you find, amongst 
your own ranks, a non-combatant outfit with 
such a record? Many a combatant one 
might glory in it ! You were almost invari- 
ably lamentably ungenerous to the men who, 
under no pressure of the draft, had given 
up fine positions safe at home to come over 
and slave and drudge for you who found 
no word or commendation for them. If they 
were unflaggingly cheerful, you dismissed 
it as **sunshine-stuff," and "taffy"; if they 
were occasionally human and irritable, you 
rent the heavens above and the earth be- 
neath with your outraged cries, and tore to 
the Y for paper so that you could write 
home at once to Aunt Minnie and tell her 



[39] 



MY A. E. F. 

to get back that fifty cents that she gave to 
the misguided organization in September. 
I honestly do blush for you. You would 
take everything that the Y gave you — every 
mortal thing — and apparently thought that 
by accepting our gifts you canceled your 
debt. We, you assured us complacently, 
were merely the instruments of the Ameri- 
can people, kindly selected by them to see 
that their contributions reached you safely. 
Well, we happened to be the American 
people ourselves, and besides giving you our 
money, we gave you our time and our 
strength and our hearts and our lives — and 
some of us were absurd enough to wonder 
why it was that you did not go on your 
knees to us — not to us, the individuals, 
amongst whom there were those who were 
faint-hearted and dishonest and bad tem- 
pered and incompetent, because we hap- 
pened to be human beings — but to us as an 
organization, because time and time and 

[40] 



MY A. E. F. 



time again we were all the happiness and 
all the comfort and all the refuge from de- 
spair that you had. I have never been in 
one Y hut (and I have been in many; we 
had two thousand for you!) that was not 
crowded to the doors. Tell me — tell me, 
my A.E.F., how could you take so much 
and give so little? For you took, day after 
day, and night after night, our service and 
our shelter, our light and our warmth, ev- 
erything from baseballs to Bibles; books 
and vaudevilles; magazines and movies; 
writing paper and music — and every single 
thing you took for granted. If you never 
used the Y, then all that I am saying is not 
for you; but cross your heart and hope to 
die, my A.E.F., didn't you use it con- 
stantly? If there were times when we 
weren't with you, it was because, alas, we 
couldn't be everywhere — and when you 
seemed to need us most, there was often no 
way to get to you. Surely you must have 



[41] 



MY A. E. F. 



realized that when the Army couldn't even 
get your corned beef up to you it wouldn't 
permit us to bring you chocolates! I want 
you to tell Aunt Minnie, who gave us the 
fifty cents for you, and Dad and Mother, 
who gave five dollars, and little Bobby, who 
gave a nickel, the truth about us — for their 
sake as much as for ours, and most of all, 
for Truth's. You needn't soften it down or 
touch it up a bit. If you discovered a Y 
man who was a thorough and consistent 
grouch or one who charged you five centimes 
more than you thought was justifiable, tell 
them the w^hole horrible tale; but in the 
name of justice and fair play and common 
decency, my A.E.F., tell them about the 
other times — the hundreds and hundreds 
and hundreds of other times when the 
Y was all that you had and when you used 
it mercilessly. If I am speaking only 
of the Y, it is because I knew it best 
and because it gave me the joy of being 



[42] 



MY A. E. F. 



with you for many months, and so I am 
eternally grateful to it; but I want you 
to tell them the truth about every organ- 
ization over there that stretched out a 
hand to you — because, by and large, it 
makes as beautiful a story as even the most 
exacting audience could care to hear. And 
for my sake, because I was a Y girl, and 
because we loved each other, please go out 
of your way to tell them about every place 
that you found us, from the God-forsaken 
little mud-hole where we had laboriously 
rigged up a movie machine and dug up a 
stove to burn for you, and hot chocolate in 
a tin can, and a wheezy graphophone to 
sing about the little gray home, and where 
we were duly exultant that we could get so 
much, and pretty sad that it was so little — 
to the incredible loveliness of the leave- 
areas, where we took the most wonderful 
casinos set in the most wonderful scenery 
in the world, and flung the doors wide and 

[43] 



MY A. E. F. 

asked you to come in and play with us — ^to 
see the best shows and hear the best singing 
and eat the best food that could be found — 
to dance on the best floors to the best music 
that you ever heard — and with the best 
dancers, too, though they did wear flowered 
aprons and had to run back to the canteen 
between times to give you ice cream. I can't 
believe that if you were ever our guest at 
one of our seven-day house parties — and at 
my house we used to entertain over three 
thousand a week! — I can't believe that you 
could help getting a little hot and uncom- 
fortable when you remembered some of the 
things that you have said about us. Be- 
cause you swore that you had never had 
such a wonderful time, and that you would 
never, never forget it. Have you forgotten, 
my A.E.F.? Gratitude and fair play and 
common justice are good things to remem- 
ber. Remember them now! 

It's getting late — and there's such a lot 

[44] 



MY A. E. F. 



that I must leave unsaid. Never was the 
day made long enough for us to talk in; 
always twilight fell before we knew it, and 
we had time only for the word that we 
wanted least to say — ^we always hated 
"Good-bye." Now it is time to go and talk 
to them, who are waiting to hear you be- 
fore you go forever. Only just let's sit 
here for a minute longer, with no words at 
all. We don't need them, do we? It's so 
quiet in the little street; it makes our ter- 
rible and beautiful adventure seem like a 
dream. The honey-suckle and the locust 
smell sweeter even than our memories of 
them and the lights are coming out one by 
one in the little houses — and tired people 
are coming home to rest. It's all so peace- 
ful and homely and exquisite; someone is 
cutting the grass next door, and the little 
girls skipping rope look like white butter- 
flies, and far down the street a woman is 
calling: "Johnny! Johnny — supper-time, 

[45] 



MY A. E. F, 



dear!" Oh, America, America, how we have 
learned to love you, we who thought that 
we might have lost you forever! And well 
do we know that in your quiet street lie ad- 
ventures more thrilling than any we have 
had — romances more wonderful than any 
we have dreamed. For in your quiet streets 
lies the Future. 

All the little lights are shining in the 
windows, and the last one is lighted in the 
west — the evening star. Do you remember 
the rhyme that we used to say when we were 
little? Give me your hand, my A.E.F., and 
we'll wish on the first star in the darkness 
before you go. 

"Star light, star bright. 
Very first star I've seen to-night. 
Wish I may, wish I might 
Have the wish I wish to-night." 

I wish, my A.E.F., that you may give 
to America, before you leave her, your 
deathless courage and imperishable strength, 



[46] 



MY A. E. 



your ringing laughter and your beautiful 
gentleness, your splendid enthusiasm and 
your eternal youth. I wish that you may 
give her your soul. 

And so farewell to you, my A.E.F. Turn 
once more to wave to me at the cross-roads 
— even though my eyes cannot see you for 
the foolish tears, my heart sees you well — 
tall and young and splendid in your khaki, 
waving farewell to me with that exultant 
laugh of yours — eager to be off, eager to be 
away. When you have turned the corner, I 
will see you still. I will see you always. So 
I will smile too, and wave, too, and be glad 
that you have come and glad that you have 
gone^ — still young and unbroken and trium- 
phant. Best comrade and truest lover and 
dearest playmate — hail and farewell, my 
A.E.F.! 



[47] 



A few extracts from the many letters re- 
ceived hy Miss Noyes after ''My A, E. F/ 
appeared in McClure's Magazine. 



From a Member of the U, S, Army Postal 
Service 

I was lucky enough to have seen many of 
the very phases of the "A. E. F." you 
mention, while staying with the boys on five 
of the drives. And I want to express to you 
my appreciation of the whole-souled work of 
your "Y" and yourself individually. I met 
you once, I remember, and I recollect your 
word of cheer to the weary ones and your 
smile of welcome to the homesick lads, and 
the "A. E. F." owes you a debt they can 
never pay. When I think of such as you, of 
"Pop" Reeves with the 78th, of that big- 
hearted, tireless worker with the Engineers 
in that forgotten village outside of Verdun, 
of those fine men and women with us on that 
drive from Amiens to Bohain with the Sec- 
ond Army Corps ; when I think of these and 

[51] 



MY A. E. F. 



many more I knew personally, I see how no 
one could criticize them. 

Mistakes were made, plenty of them, by 
every organization connected with the army. 
But why blame the mistakes of a few men 
on the whole organization? Most of the re- 
ports of the "Y" were second-hand and but 
few men I heard knew personally of any 
fault; it was always some friend had told 
them, etc. Even some of the stories were 
changed so little that you could always rec- 
ognize that particular brand, though the 
place and location was always different, of 
course. 

I was connected with the Postal Agency 
and was with many units and outfits and 
hence had opportunity for observation, as I 
was with fighting units all the time. Your 
article certainly goes into my war scrap book 
with big headlines as the very best magazine 
article I have seen. 



[52] 



MY A. E. F. 

I had to laugh, yes, and cry, too, as I read 
your story, for somehow both laughter and 
tears seem nearer the surface since being 
"over there." In fact the whole experience 
stirred up emotions a fellow did not know 
he ever possessed. How could a fellow know 
what he would do or say when going up 
towards the Front on the Toul Sector when 
he witnessed the camions of refugees coming 
out of the zone of fire, some of the children 
wounded, some mothers with bandaged heads 
with the blood in a tiny stream down their 
faces showing how far back the German high 
explosives came. As they saw for the first 
time the Americans going in and when the 
driver told them of the Americans going in 
to their relief, they smiled and cheered and 
waved their hands to us as we went by and 
yelled "Vive I'Amerique." Did a fellow 
know that he would wave to them and yell 
"Vive la France" until he had a sore throat 
and a husky voice and the tears had streaked 

[53] 



MY A. E. F. 



through the dust on his face until the white 
showed through. Well, he did. 

But there are too many times and too 
many occasions to mention. You know 
them all. I just simply wish to thank you 
for what your story makes us remember 
more vividly, for the message it should carry 
to every one who was "over there," for the 
notions it will change for many who do not 
know the real message you carried and the 
wonderful help you were to us all. 



From a First Division Private 

I have just finished reading your story 
entitled "My A. E. F." and I want to con- 
gratulate you, for it sure rings true. I ought 
to know because I was one of the first men 
in France with the First Division and fought 
up until the armistice with them. In closing 
I want to say that you sure have a wonderful 
way of explaining such a tangled-up affair! 

[54] 



MY A. E. F. 



From an "A. E. Fer"' of the 33rd Division 

Your article shows more of the true spirit 
of our indomitable American girl than any- 
thing I have read. There is a tribute to the 
A. E. F. that every man should glory in. 
You have expressed the true state of affairs 
in regard to the Y. M. C. A. also. Perhaps 
I have, with others, inwardly cussed certain 
individuals with the "Y" at times. But no 
A. E. F. man can truthfully say that he did 
not spend many a happy hour in the "Y." 



From a former Captain in the 90th Division 

The rarest of gifts has been given to you, 
the gift of writing in such a direct, appeal- 
ing way that one cannot help but feeling 
that you are sitting in the old oak chair by 
the fireplace pouring out your thoughts to 
him. You have a wonderful command of 
the English language, but more wonderful 



MY A. E. F. 



still is your deep understanding of human 
nature. Your power of observation is a rare 
gift, but rarer still is your broad tolerance of 
the whims and shortcomings of mankind^ a 
tolerance so deep, so understanding, so God- 
given that the meanest and roughest of us of 
your A. E. F. revealed some few short 
flashes of virtue and strength. 

Yes, "Petite," we were intolerant, arro- 
gant, over-confident, and far, far too swift 
to draw conclusions. In a mean, narrow 
way, forgetting all the difficulties that the 
"Y" encountered, all the lack of assistance 
and encouragement that should have been 
given by the highest army officers down to 
the lowest buck-private, I, too, wrote home 
to "Aunt Minnie" and told her to stop her 
monthly contributions to the misguided or- 
ganization. Had I taken time to think the 
matter over in a sober and tolerant manner, 
I know that the letter would never have been 
written. 



[56] 



MY A. E. F. 

From a former Captain in the Canadian 
Eoopeditionary Forces 

As a member of the C. E. F. with 33 
months' service in France, I venture to write 
and express my appreciation of the charm- 
ing way in which you refer to the soldiers of 
the Allies of the United States — British and 
French. Your appeal to your men to be 
guided by their own opinions, and not by 
those of others — so often I fear of propa- 
gandists who would stir up distrust of Eng- 
land and France — is so eminently sane and 
is what is so much required just now. 

There are many here who would create the 
same feeling in Canada against the United 
States and it is only by writing such as yours 
that a continuance of the entente which ex- 
isted during the war can be maintained. 



[57] 



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